Heartstrings Come Undone
by fhjirskv
Summary: Fate can never be cheated. No matter how hard you try. Everything happens for a reason, whether we know it at the time or not. Oneshot.


_Heartstrings, you're tugging at my heartstrings..._

The distant stanza replayed in his head, distantly, as if it were a broken record with the volume almost all the way down. For some reason, it seemed particularly applicable today.

Wherever he went, people he loved died. An inevitable result of the ongoing war, but still... why did it seem like it was always someone he was close to? He felt remorse when soldiers died, but they had laid their lives on the line. His friends had no such intentions. It was the major cause of his friendlessness, and his inability to make any new friends: he was scared to get close to them, lest they pass on as everyone else he had known.

Many nights he laid in his sleeping bag, having abandoned the idea of a permanent home, and wondered why he was still on this earth. If everyone else was dying, why did it seem he could do outrageously perilous things with constant impunity? He wondered why he should be allowed to live on in this constant agony. He wondered what his destiny was, that destiny that he had to fulfill before he could leave his mortal body. Does it always have to be destiny fulfilled? he asked himself many times. His companions, his sister, they all died before they were to complete their missions, find their purpose in life and pass it on to another. One time he tried to cheat the laws of Fate, an act of desperation and grief.

_He stood at the edge of the cliff over a rocky shore at high tide, watching the waves crash ruthlessly against the sharp edges with a mindless hypnosis. Being so far above the water's surface created two choices. He knew that if he hit the water at just the right angle he could break his neck upon impact with the ocean's surface, or with a less careless dive he could simply drop into the ocean unharmed until the waves mercilessly smacked him against the rocks enough to kill him. _

_He dove._

_Instead of breaking his neck, he simply landed beneath the surface, unharmed. Determined to make this work, he took a large breath in, and automatically sputtered, coughing up the salty water. Before he could take another breath, he was smacked against a rock. Hard. And just as suddenly as he was pushed, he was pulled back out. The cycle repeated itself a couple of times before he lost consciousness. Suddenly he saw Yue's face before him. _

_"Yue..." he breathed. "am I dead?"_

_"No," she replied. Her voice was calm, but her face and her eyes showed an emotion indescribable, a mix of worry, exasperation, and sadness. "it's not your time. You can't cheat Fate, you know." _

_His face grew hot, and his voice automatically raised. "I can't cheat Fate? Fate cheated me all my life. I watched my mother burn alive when I was a boy, watched my sister drown in her own element, and watched everyone I have ever loved wrenched away from me, time and time again. I can't bring myself to love anymore. I am miserable, a nomad hermit who occasionally stops into villages to beg and be ridiculed. I am not even thirty years old yet, but I am helpless to save anyone, so why should Fate save me this one time?"_

_Yue's gaze was sympathetic. "You are not helpless. You simply haven't discovered your destiny." Her face started to fade._

_"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, growing frantic. "Yue? Where are you? Don't leave me again!"_

_He opened his eyes to see that he was on the wrack line of the beach, the low tide waves licking at his toes and the sun gently drying his sweat and ocean-soaked body. "Yue.." He murmured, curling into a ball and crying himself to sleep on the beach where he lay._

He knew he had a purpose, a destiny to fulfill. After realizing this, Sokka slept much better, and vowed he would never attempt to take his life again. Fate would have its way. It always did.

* * *

**A/N: I almost had him kill himself, but I realized that would be too clichéd and predictable. So I made it end pleasantly. I'm too nice for my own good.**

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